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Sophia Wakefield
Miss Johnson
English 250PR
29 April 2015
Documented Essay
Something that people may overlook when they think back to high school is
physical education. Physical education can mean gym class where you get graded for
how well you did being physically active or many other things. Physical education may
mean that not only were you physically active in some way shape or form with a group of
people from your class or it could also include learning healthy habits about food or diet
and nutrition. Gym may have been only something you did growing up once or twice a
week through middle school or it could mean that you had gym class multiple times a
week for a total of a few hours and you had it until you graduated. Well, looking into
physical education and how it is determined in high schools for all of their students or for
only students that want to take gym is a controversial topic today.
To start off, think about what you had for physical education not only in
elementary school but also mainly on what went on in high school. This answer may
vary from person to person in a large variety of ways, but at the end of the day everyone
has taken a gym class at some point in their life. In doing research on high schools across
the nation physical education has a wide variety of meaning to people at every school.
From talking to people in classes at college it has been interesting to see that no one
really knew that people at other schools were doing completely different things for
physical education and have looked over the subject completely. One student I talked to,
Madison Albers, said that in her high school that physical education was a class that they
took every single year growing up and when they got to high school they still had to take

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it. In high school Madison seemed to have the traditional gym classes where they would
run the mile every year and see how many push ups they can do. Her and everyone else
who went through Benton Community would get graded on how well they can do
physical activity. If they could run the mile in a certain allotted time period that was
faster than the average pace they would get a better score out of 10 compared to someone
who would run slower. Madison doesnt remember the exact requirements of how fast
she had to run a mile so she could get an A for that unit in gym class but it was
definitely something that the students would try to compete against each other in.
From doing research online and even watching TV or movies when there are
students in gym class it seemed that pretty much every school was the same and got some
sort of physical activity in to their school routine. Online there was an article that talked
about more of the education side in the word physical education to help benefit all of
their students. This article on CDC.gov mentioned to teach the students a healthy way of
living and still incorporating physical activity in that way. CDC says to teach students
how to be healthy and how they can be healthy and walk or bike to school and how that
benefits their health. The article also mentioned how teachers or mentors can be a role
model for their students and be physically active and healthy so it gives the children
someone to look up to and may not be as scary to approach if they are living what they
are teaching. Promoting good eating choices and proper health tips to students can easily
be done by teachers and can get the kids involved is something that the Centers of
Disease Control and Prevention thinks is key to a gym class.
Not only is eating and living healthy a good way of life important for students to
learn but some people may say that there is a breaking point for special cases.

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Specifically people mean athletes in this case and do not mention people with disabilities.
With that being said a news station right here in Iowa, KCRG, says that In the late
1990's the state of Iowa first began letting school districts decide to let student athletes
opt out on P.E. classes. This may not be something new to many schools in Iowa like
the article Students, Teachers Adjust to Gym Class Without Athletes by Katie Wiedemann
wrote but it is something that is discussed a lot when it comes to physical education
requirements in high school. This article points out a point where many athletes today
play more than one sport for their high school and have plenty of physical activity outside
of the classroom. Student athletes go above the recommended 30 minutes of daily
physical activity and dont need to be exhausted from their gym class that day. From the
KCRG article some teachers were interviewed and say that the athletes in their class set a
good role model and example for the other students. They also say that they take on a
lead role in the class to get the students active and help them enjoy the matter more. One
of the teachers in the article said that they think that they need the athletes in their class
still because they will work out different areas of their body that will help them in their
sport. On the other hand there are many coaches that do not like the idea of their players
going to gym class in general because they are getting plenty of exercise. The main
concern for most coaches is that they dont want their players to go to gym class on game
days because they dont them to be exhausted for the big game. This topic alone of
whether or not student athletes go to class or are required to go to class has several view
points within in it but still focus on the physical education for highs school requirements
as a whole.
High school physical education requirements vary everywhere whether it is based

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on level of performance, learning how to live a healthier life as a whole or whether or not
athletes need to take gym class. Not only are these four topics controversial in their own
way and have so many different approaches at them each it still comes down to physical
education requirements for high school students. There may never be an exact outline
and rules to follow for each high school in the nation but at the end of the day students
are taking physical education one point in their life. It has seemed that peoples opinions
will continue to be growing from what they know and have learned about the issue.
Today people are taking the physical education requirements for high school students into
consideration and making progress in their own way. As people are debating the topic
there is something related to physical education that everyone can relate to in some way
or another.

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Works Cited:
Bidwell, Allie. "Most U.S. Youths Don't Meet National Physical Activity Guidelines."
US News. U.S.News & World Report, 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/01/08/most-us-youths-dont-meet-nationalphysical-activity-guidelines

Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (CDC). Tips for Teachers: Promoting
Healthy Eating and Physical Activity in the Classroom (n.d.): n. pag. Cdc.gov. Web. 29
Apr. 2015.
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/npao/pdf/Tips_for_Teachers_TAG508.pdf

Wiedemann, Katie. "Students, Teachers Adjust to Gym Class Without Athletes | KCRGTV9 | Cedar Rapids, Iowa News, Sports, and Weather." KCRG. N.p., 3 Apr. 2015. Web.
15 Apr. 2015.
http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/Students-Teachers-Adjust-to-Gym-Class-WithoutAthletes-245440341.html

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Pannoni, Alexandra. "High School Gym Classes Get a 21st-Century Makeover." US

News. U.S.News & World Report, 19 May 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2015.
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2014/05/19/high-schoolgym-classes-get-a-21st-century-makeover

Albers, Madison R. "Physical Education Requirements in High School." Personal

interview. 20 Apr. 2015.
Interview questions I asked her:
Where did you go to high school? Benton Community
How often did you take gym? Every year growing up through high school
How would you describe your gym class? Like everyone elses. We were graded
on how fast we could run on a scale. So shorter amount of time it took us to run
the mile we would get a better score out of 10 then someone else in our class.
Describe more please, like go in depth if you can? I dont remember the scale
exactly with the times but if the top score was 10/10 and you ran a seven-minute
mile for example then you would get all the points. Or if you ran shorter than that
then you would still get the points. But if you ran super slow then there was a
scale for that and points that would correspond to it and get maybe 7/10 instead. I
think my gym classes were like normal and what everyone did and saw in the
media. Different push-ups and we all would be doing the same thing as a class.